


Nocturne

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Avengers vs X-men, Crossover, F/F, F/M, I mean, M/M, MCU / X-Men Crossover, Multiverse, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Not Canon Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Oh joy, The Avengers are one big dysfunctional family, The X-Men are a weird mixture of movies and comics, Wanda Maximoff Needs a Hug, and one is green, bad news: one is kind of a villain, good news you have extra family, i'll try to make it work, idk - Freeform, marvel crossover, one is dead, one is not really your brother, she's so confused, who could blame her
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 14:23:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14813057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Eléjora, otherwise known by her alias Jorie Hennessy, leads a complicated life to say the least. She’s a woman from the planet Riia who’s been stranded on Earth for the last 170 years, away from her family and world. She witnessed multiple alien invasions in the early twenty-first century, but actually declined an invitation to join the Avengers in favor of a semi-normal life. However, when worlds collide and a group known as the X-Men emerge from the ashes, Eléjora anchors herself alongside Earth’s mightiest heroes.The X-Men and the Avengers quickly come into conflict once Doctor Strange realizes that only one of their realities can survive the cataclysm of this impact. Both sides are fighting for the survival of their respective universes.They don’t want a war, but there’s no other choice. Only one world can remain.





	Nocturne

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! So, uh, this fic is not canon compliant. It takes place after AoU, but doesn't include the events of any movies after Captain America: Civil War, sans Spider-Man: Homecoming. I intend to incorporate the newer characters such as Peter Parker, T'Challa, and Stephen Strange, as well as some more characters from the comics. As for how this ties into the X-Men movieverse, this story would take place in the alternate timeline established by Days of Future Past, five years after Dark Phoenix (which hasn't been released at the time of this writing.) The events of that story will be explained. 
> 
> Anyways, I wrote this first chapter during finals week so don't expect anything award-worthy, lol.

Eléjora had many names.

After all, her real name stuck out in human society like a blossom in a mud puddle. So she’d gone by half a dozen aliases, swapping them out along with the changing generations.

Now, the world was aware of the realm beyond the sol system, and so Eléjora was free to come out of hiding. 

It was about damn time.

She’d seen too many wars. She’d lived through conflict after conflict, and had even fought in some herself. 

And yet, Eléjora had never seen anything like this. 

She was roused from an uneasy slumber at midnight exactly, with an urgent notification ordering her to head to the West Coast Avengers Headquarters immediately. Seeing as she was currently residing there, tardiness wasn’t much of a concern for her. Despite her longevity, Eléjora needed sleep as much as any human being did, and she was rather annoyed for being called at this hour.

Jorie hastily slipped out of her thin nightgown and changed into a black leather jumpsuit, not unlike Natasha’s. It wasn’t her usual costume, but time could very well be of the essence, and so she didn’t want to delay any longer. She buckled her boots and sprinted out of the bedroom. As she did, Wanda came out of her own quarters, blinking blearily. 

“What is happening?” Wanda asked, her voice slurred with fatigue. Jorie responded by saying that she didn’t know.

The two women ran together, both too disoriented to fly in such a narrow corridor. That was when Wanda let out a yell and fell, her cheek touching the floor. Jorie skidded to a halt and covered her mouth in shock. “Are you okay?” When Wanda didn’t respond, apparently incapacitated by this … something, Jorie repeated the question. “Ty v poryadke, Wanda?”

Wanda let out a whimper and grasped Jorie’s forearm. “Something’s happening,” she exhaled shakily, her scarlet-brimmed eyes wide with horror. “Do you feel it, Eléjora?” When the Riian woman shook her head, Wanda frowned. “How can you not? It’s all I can see and hear.”

“I’ll take your word for it—” Jorie started to say, uneasy, before something cold washed over her like a tidal wave. Her knees started to wobble, and a shiver ran down her spine. Jorie’s eyes fluttered closed as she concentrated. Sure enough, she felt what Wanda was referring to. Something was out of whack. An omnipresent universal function had gone awry. Jorie could tell this much easily, despite only being able to access the darkest forms of cosmic energy.

If _she_ could detect it so easily, she had no idea how much discomfort Wanda was in right now. Wanda, who had access to the powers of the Mind Stone. She was intimately aware of its fluctuations, way more so than Jorie could ever dream of being.

“Come on,” Jorie urged her, tugging at her arm. “We need to tell the others.”

“There will be no need for that,” Wanda said through gritted teeth. “Whatever this is about, I’m sure that it has to do with…” She trailed off, struggling to find words adequate enough to describe what she was sensing.

Jorie nodded in understanding. She didn’t need to say anything else. The two women wasted no more time on the discussion, only taking off and sprinting to the briefing room two floors below. They arrived in time to find the rest of the Avengers crowded around a holographic map display.

“Where is that?” Jorie asked as she entered the room. She knew that it was probably a map of a familiar place, but she wasn’t the best at geography in general, let alone Earthly geography.

“Westchester, upstate New York,” Steve answered grimly, his arms crossed as he studied the projection. 

“But I thought that Westchester was downstate?” That was Clint, his lined face contorted into a confused frown. 

Peter Parker managed to look extremely offended. “Anything north of NYC is upstate, thank you very much.” He then high-fived Steve, who was nodding vigorously. 

“Can we focus? Thank you.” Tony managed to look extremely annoyed. “Upstate, downstate, not exactly far from our main base.” He reached out and zoomed in on the flashing red dot. “ _This_ represents the unknown.”

A confused murmur swept across the room at this. “Unknown?” Natasha repeated incredulously. “Is it an oh-eight-four?” 

“Not exactly.” Now Banner was talking. The scientist got up from his seat and walked over to Tony’s side. “This—this is an energy surge, like nothing anyone’s seen or studied. It has to be otherworldly. And until we know for sure, we’re going to investigate the area.”

“Jorie, Thor,” Tony said, turning to them. “You’re our resident aliens. Do either of you know anything about any other disturbances?"

“If I did, you’d know by now too, believe me,” Thor responded tersely, shaking his head. Jorie saw his fingers creep, as if instinctively, to the hilt of Mjolnir. “This is like nothing I’ve ever seen.” He nodded at her. “You?”

Jorie bit her lip, hesitating, then nodded slowly. She saw most of her teammates lean forward in their seats as she began to talk. “I don’t have any experience with this topic. I don’t even know what it is. But just now, I sensed something odd. A disturbance. I don’t know much about it … but I know that something is most certainly wrong on a cosmic level.”

Silence met her words, then Wanda raised her hand like a freaking high school student. “I felt it too. I was with Eléjora when it happened. I sensed it much more intensely than she. It felt—feels—like the entire _omniverse_ had been turned inside out. I can’t even begin to describe it.” She shivered, and Jorie noticed that her graceful hands were trembling. She then turned to her synthezoid husband. “Viz, did you feel it?”

“Most potently,” Vision answered, his posture visibly rigid. 

“This is bad,” Tony muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose as his lips curled into a deep, long-etched frown. “Yeah, no shit Sherlock,” he muttered to himself before anyone could point out the obvious. He clasped his hands, resigned. “Alright. Here’s our game plan; we go in and investigate the instability. Banner and I will handle the scientific mumbo jumbo. Thor, Vision, and Eléjora will accompany us, in case we encounter anything cosmic. Now that I think about it, Maximoff better come, too, what with her wiggly-woos and red handwavy stuff.” He ignored Wanda’s taken aback expression as he continued, “The rest of you will remain on alert for any potential problems. We don’t know what we’re dealing with.” 

“Sounds like a plan,” Steve commented, strapping his iconic shield to the back of his leather jacket. Jorie found herself nodding in agreement.

Natasha got up from her chair and cocked her pistol, while all but glaring challengingly at her teammates. Then she dropped the intimidation act, her lips curling into a sardonic smirk. “Shall we?” 

 

In the quinjet, Jorie found herself unable to fall asleep despite her fatigue. Most of the others seemed to be feeling the same way, their minds racing despite their closed eyes. She glanced up from her limp pillow and saw that Tony wasn’t even trying. He was sitting up in a frumpy gray jumpsuit, apparently his version of pajamas.

Through the narrow walkway she saw Vision’s crimson form, piloting them through the crisp night.

After ten more minutes of just lying on the cold, hard floor, Jorie gave up and arched her back in a much-needed stretch. Tony glanced up at her. “You too, huh?” he muttered. Jorie could only nod numbly in response.

“Is it wrong that I’m … scared?” Jorie breathed, immediately wishing that she could take back the words. Dammit, dammit. Now they’re all going to think I’m a coward. I sure feel like one.

Tony studied her for a long moment. “I’m scared. We all are. It’s one thing to face a warmonger or an army. It’s another to face something cosmic and completely unknown.”

“Widow’s not scared,” Jorie pointed out, nodding at the former assassin’s sleeping form. She didn’t know Natasha all that well—this was only her third month on the team—but the woman seemed to be completely fearless. 

Tony looked doubtful. “Nat’s terrified as well, believe me.” He stared at his friend’s face, serene in the moonlight. “She’s just better at hiding it.” His dark eyes gleamed. “But now that we’re both awake, I want to ask you something else. You told me the other day that you’re a polyglot.”

Unsure of where this was going, Jorie nodded.

He crossed his arms and arched a silver-fringed eyebrow. “I’m a polyglot too. What languages d’you know?”

Jorie laughed bitterly. “Well, there’s of course my native language, but the name of it doesn’t really translate well into human tongue, so I’ll just call it Riian. It was all I spoke when I first crashed here on Earth. It took years for me to learn English, but I learned it. Since I’ve had so much time on my hands, I’ve been able to pick up Spanish, French, and Chinese. I’m also passable in Japanese, Korean, Russian, and German.”

Normally most people would react with amazement or disbelief after being told that, but Tony, being Tony, only shrugged nonchalantly. “I know all of those minus Russian, and I know Arabic, along with a little bit of Xhosa---the Wakandan dialect---and Urdu.”

“How did you manage to learn all of that in your lifetime?”

“With my one-eighty intelligence quotient,” he replied with a proud grin.

“Hm.” Jorie frowned, then nodded in acceptance of this apparent fact. 

“I’ve never heard you speak Riian before,” Tony commented, leaning tiredly against the steel wall of the quinjet. “You wouldn’t mind saying something for me?”

Jorie hesitated, then bit her lip and nodded. She thought for a moment, then spoke: “Lthuso y’ma te-coo shanada.”

He perked with interest. “What did you say?”

“Something.” She shrugged. “That’s what you told me to say. Although a more direct translation would be _undefined part of the whole_.”

Tony raised his eyebrows and let out an amused snort. “And I thought Latin was pretentious.”

Jorie opened her mouth to respond, but she was promptly interrupted by the sound of not one but two of her fellow teammates stirring, rousing from their uneasy slumbers. She turned to find that Natasha and Thor were murmuring quietly to one another in low voices.

Jorie tried to suppress her instinctive frown at the sight of Thor. Riia and Asgard possessed a rivalry that went back thousands of years, after a war between the two worlds had been driven to stalemate. Jorie knew it was ridiculous, not to mention disgusting, but the years she’d spent on Riia had taught her to hate Asgardians with her entire heart. Although it had been 170 years since, Jorie found that it was difficult conditioning to shake off.

Plus, who could fault a man with such gorgeous arms? 

Once, she’d asked Thor if he’d ever thought of becoming a L’Oreal model. He had only looked at her funny, though, and so she’d promptly dropped the subject.

Natasha glanced over at them with a smirk. “Maybe your collective linguistic abilities will be enough to save the world from…” She waved her hand carelessly. “From whatever this is.”

“Yours, too.” Tony insisted. He pointed at her. “Don’t you speak, like, six languages? Latin included? Why? Why Latin? It’s a _mortuus lingua**_.”

Natasha’s friendly gaze suddenly turned to stone, and she stared at Tony with a scowl. Her eyes burned with suppressed emotion. “Why do you think?” she asked softly. 

Jorie had no idea what the ex-assassin was referring to, but Tony apparently did, for he raised his hands above his head in apparent surrender and muttered, “Sorry, Nat.”

Natasha nodded and turned around, settling herself next to Thor again. 

“Um, I think I’m going to try and get some sleep,” Jorie mumbled, before curling up on the cold metal floor once more. Unlike her first attempt, she found herself sliding into sleep almost instantaneously. 

 

A soft, lulling beep forcibly dragged Eléjora out of her foggy stupor. She tried to sit up, wincing as her tensed-up joints made a weird cracking noise. “Are … are we here?” she asked, peering out the window. Her eyes narrowed against the bright sun.

“Just landed,” Rhodey confirmed. 

Jorie got up and brushed off her spandex pant legs. Her stomach growled, but now was no time to contemplate a minor detail such as hunger. The other Avengers were strapping on their uniforms and gear. Since Jorie hadn’t brought her own uniform or costume, and she didn’t need any weapons, she just idled there.

“Alright,” Banner said, grim-faced. “Jorie, Vision, Wanda, and Thor will follow me and Tony to the site.”

The remaining heroes parted to form a walkway to the ramp, and the summoned Avengers made their ways through the quinjet with varying degrees of uncertainty. Eléjora inhaled shakily, thankful that this atmosphere had enough nitrogen to sustain her through battle—even if the excess oxygen cyclically made her feel ill.

Not so much now, though. It had been a severe problem when she’d first arrived here on Earth, but now she only got oxygen poisoning once every few years or so; her body had adapted to the new atmosphere.

“Eléjora!” Vision’s questioning voice snapped her out of her daze. He was in a human disguise, save for the glowing orb pulsating from under his forehead.

She shook her head apologetically. “Coming,” she called back, before deboarding the quinjet.

The air outside was not terribly cold. If Jorie had to guess, it was thirty degrees fahrenheit. A little under room temperature for a Riian, but uncomfortable for an unprepared human. Indeed, she saw that Banner and Tony’s faces were already becoming flushed with cold. Wanda didn’t seem as affected, although she looked by no means thrilled. And of course Vision couldn’t care less.

Jorie glanced over at Thor and couldn’t help but crack a grin. He was dressed in casual civilian wear, not his usual Asgardian drapes that Tony so often made fun of. It was funny to see what basically amounted to a god dressed as a mere human man.

“Where is it?” Wanda asked Tony. Jorie saw that the self-proclaimed Scarlet Witch’s fists were clenched, wisps of red weaving through the cracks between her fingers. Her eyes flared crimson.

“If Bruce weren’t here, we all could’ve flown,” Tony said, casting a glance of mock annoyance toward his friend, who shrugged sheepishly. “So we’ll walk. It’s northwest of here.” 

To the dismay of everyone in their little party, they walked.

 

Forty-seven minutes later, they found a paved road, although they saw very few cars passing by. They followed that path as it wove through forests of oak and pine and shrubbery. At one point, Wanda squealed with excitement when she spotted not one but three chipmunks chasing each other up and into a hollowed trunk.

Soon, they reached a metal gate. It was obviously well-tended to, with flowers lined perfectly against the metal stakes, and acutely preened blades of grass that complimented the antiquely sign, emblazoned with five golden words that would begin the cataclysm to follow: _Xavier’s School For Gifted Youngsters_.

**Author's Note:**

> * "Are you okay, Wanda?"   
> ** "It's a dead language."


End file.
